By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
The Windsor County Sheriff’s Department has nearly doubled the size of its deputy staff, significantly expanded services, and added a new canine unit. All the activity has occurred since County Sheriff Ryan Palmer assumed office on Feb. 1, having been elected by Windsor County voters the preceding November.
Palmer provided an update on the status and activities of the Sheriff’s Department to the Barnard Selectboard on Wednesday, Nov. 1, and elaborated on his remarks in a conversation with the Standard on Tuesday afternoon. He confirmed that the roster of sworn law enforcement officers serving as deputies in the Windsor County department has swelled from 12 to 22. The presence on the department staff of Palmer himself brings the tally of deputies to 23.
“I started on day one by bringing in some new folks and we just increased the effort since then,” Palmer said on Tuesday. “We just put one other person in the most recent Level 2 Police Academy and he is working on getting all of his certifications so he can work on his own.” Palmer added that most of the new deputies are working full-time, with only three working part-time.
Given the funding challenges that have often plagued sheriff’s departments in Vermont, which derive most of their financial resources from contracts with local communities and service to regional courts and the Vermont Department of Corrections, Palmer was asked how the Windsor County department has been able to afford the expansion.
“We’re just taking on more contracted work,” Palmer explained, saying the new efforts extend beyond the contracted services, predominantly for traffic enforcement, that the department provides to eight Windsor County communities: Rochester, Sharon, Barnard, Pomfret, Plymouth, Reading, Cavendish, and Hartland. “We’re doing lots of private, outside details. We’ve added a couple of court positions in Washington County that we are providing deputies for and we are providing security at Department of Children and Families in Hartford and a couple of other state offices where we’re the main security there.”
Kye, the K9 trainee who will be the first member of the department’s canine unit.
Palmer added that his team is also providing additional services to the communities with which it holds contracts, beyond the customary traffic enforcement and issuance of speeding citations. “We’re trying to be more responsive to community issues such as drug houses, that type of thing,” the sheriff noted. “We’ve done a couple of search warrants; we’ve recovered stolen guns. We’re really branching out and doing more full-service law enforcement types of things.
There’s another new staff member coming aboard the Sheriff’s Department soon: Kye, it turns out, is a recruit of the four-legged variety. The female Dutch shepherd will be the first pup in the department’s new Canine Unit, to which one officer will be dedicated as Kye’s master and comrade. “I’m sending out the check to purchase the dog next week. She’s coming to us from Sector K9, a non-profit training center in Texas,” Palmer offered. “We already have an officer designated to work with her. And we’ve purchased a specially outfitted canine car from the town of Chester, where it went out of use when the chief there retired. It has special seating to protect the dog and heat sensors that turn on a fan when needed so the dog doesn’t get too hot. It’s all special equipment for the dog to ride around in the car on patrol.”